Sunday, 30 November 2014

Shopping
online through smartphones is expected to be a game changer shortly and
industry experts believe that m-commerce would contribute up to 70% of
their total revenues.

"In India, the mobile internet traffic
now outweighs personal computer traffic. With increasing penetration of
smartphones, India is all set to be a massive market for m-commerce. The
marketing strategies for e-commerce companies will increasingly be
tailored to suit the rising adoption of smartphones, social media and
improving customer experience across touch points and platforms," Amazon
India vice president and country manager Amit Agarwal said.

He said that more than 40% of their traffic comes from mobile devices.

Mobile internet users in India are estimated to be 120 million compared
to 100 million users logging online on their personal computers.

"Close to 60% of our orders are coming over mobile now. It is growing
really fast. We get more traffic on the mobile than we get on personal
computers. Within the next 12 months over 75% of our orders will be on
mobile," Snapdeal co-founder Kunal Bahl said.

Fashion portal retailer Myntra.com expects close to 70% of revenue coming through mobiles this fiscal.

"Myntra.com has witnessed phenomenal activity on the m-commerce front,
with smartphones gaining prominence as the preferred mode to access and
shop for fashion brands in the country.

"Currently, close to
50% of our business is driven by m-commerce and with the launch of our
Mobile App across all platforms (Android, iOS and Windows), we expect
this figure to grow to 70% by end of this fiscal," Myntra chief product
and technology officer Shamik Sharma said.

M-commerce is
estimated to be 30% of the $3 billion e-tailing industry and is likely
to grow to nearly 40% of the industry that is expected to be $32 billion
by 2020, according to Technopak senior vice president, retail and
consumer products, Ankur Bisen.

Flipkart senior director of
marketing, Mausam Bhatt said e-commerce industry is gradually
progressing to be a m-commerce industry.

"I think the way
e-commerce industry is evolving it is becoming more of a mobile-commerce
industry. If you look at Flipkart a year ago, less than 10% of our
orders, transactions and visits used to come from mobile commerce. Now
those numbers are greater than 50% for us. It is accelerating at a very
rapid pace. We are seeing more than 2 times or 3 times growth from the
mobile front compared to desktop, where Flipkart is growing overall but
mobile is growing at a much faster pace," he said.

Friday, 28 November 2014

It is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor and 1GB RAM. It comes
with 8GB internal storage and supports microSD card slots of up to 32GB
for expansion. The phone has a 2500mAh battery.

It runs Android
4.4 KitKat. The phone features motion control technology which makes
the use of accelerometer and proximity sensor to control Music player,
FM radio, Gallery, Camera and calls. It also allows access to multiple
apps via Float Task on a dual window operation mode, for multitasking.

Danish
fashion niche retailer Bestseller, whose brands like Vero Moda compete
with market leaders H&M and Zara, said its pre-tax profit rose 21%
in 2013-2014 as it pared down on stores and boosted its internet
business.

Revenues rose 5% to 20.1 billion Danish crowns ($3.4
billion) in the 2013-14 financial year while pretax profit grew to 1.7
billion crowns, the unlisted firm said late on Thursday.

Earlier this month the company said its Bestseller Retail Europe
division, which runs physical stores and accounts for about 10% of its
total revenue, would close every 20th store after profits for that
division fell by 50%.

"Through an increased focus on our
operations and through an even closer collaboration with our partners
and customers, we have managed to grow and create better results in a
challenging market," chief executive Anders Holch Povlsen said.

Povlsen, son of the founder of Bestseller and Denmark's second richest
man, said the synergies between physical stores and e-commerce has
become more critical than ever.

"Our goal is that the digital
options available become a larger part of Bestseller's DNA and that the
link between the physical stores and our online activities becomes even
more natural," Povlsen said in the annual report.

Bestseller
has more than 3,000 stores across 38 markets worldwide and an online
presence in 70 markets, with mid-market brands such as Vero Moda,
Pieces, Mamalicious and high mid-market brands such as Selected Femme
and Selected Homme.

Despite a solid revenue growth of 5%, the
company was behind H&M and Zara, which posted growth of 9% and 8%
respectively at their last annual reports.

Thursday, 27 November 2014

Uber
Technologies investors are betting the five-year-old car-booking app is
more valuable than Twitter and Hertz Global Holdings.

The
startup is close to raising a round of financing that would value it
between $35 billion and $40 billion, according to people familiar with
the situation, who asked not to be identified because the details are
private. T Rowe Price Group is in discussions to be a new investor and
existing investor Fidelity Investments is also set to participate in the
funding, the people said.

"At this valuation, investors appear
to be thinking that when Uber goes public, it might be worth $80
billion to $100 billion," said Anand Sanwal, chief executive officer of
CB Insights, a research firm in New York. "This type of mega-financing
affords Uber a great deal of flexibility in terms of when they might go
public."

If Uber completes the funding, the valuation of as
much as $40 billion would more than double its $17 billion value from a
June financing round. That would also put Uber at about 1.5 times the
capitalization of microblogging service Twitter and at the same size as
Salesforce.com, Delta Airlines and Kraft Foods Group. It would dwarf
car-rental company Hertz, which has a market capitalization of $11
billion.

The funding talks show that investors' appetite for
growth wasn't affected by the fallout from remarks made last week by
senior vice president Emil Michael about prying into journalists'
private lives.

"Uber has done a lot of ill-considered things,
but I still wish I were its investor," said David Cowan, a partner at
Bessemer Venture Partners.

Record Valuation

Uber is seeking to raise at least $1 billion, the people said. The
financing hasn't closed and the terms and investor group may still
change, one of the people said. T Rowe previously considered investing
in Uber and may still end up passing this time, two of the people said.
Representatives for Uber, T Rowe and Fidelity declined to comment
yesterday.

Already in June, Uber's valuation was a record for a
US technology startup in a direct investment round. That put it at the
front of a pack of elite US technology startups that are valued in the
eleven-digit range, including Airbnb and Dropbox.

Such
valuations are spreading internationally. In China, smartphone maker
Xiaomi is in talks for a funding round that would value it at $40
billion to $50 billion, people familiar with the matter have said.

Uber is raising more money to finance its international expansion,
people close to the situation said earlier this month. The company,
founded in 2009 by Garrett Camp and chief executive officer Travis
Kalanick, has rolled out its car-booking services to more than 220
cities worldwide.

Uber has run into controversies during its
fast expansion, including roiling established taxi and limousine
industries and facing regulatory hurdles. Some drivers for the service
have also complained about the company's commission structure.

Last week, Uber introduced a rewards program for drivers and hired law
firm Hogan Lovells to conduct an internal review on its data-privacy.

Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Korean
giant Samsung continued to be the smartphone market leader in India
with 24%, followed by Micromax (20%) and Lava (8%), research firm IDC in
a statement said.

The research firm said that Samsung has
witnessed shipment growth in Q3 2014 but it has been lower than than the
industry average.

"There is a contraction in their (Samsung) market share", IDC added.

The finding puts Karbonn (also 8% market share) together with Lava at
third slot and said that more than 85% of Karbonn's shipment volume is
supported by handsets priced less than $100.

"Lava's feature
phone business shaped up well in Q3 2014. It was able to clinch the
fourth spot in the overall mobile phone business surpassing Karbonn," it
added.

The research firm ranks Motorola at fifth position with 5% of the smartphone market pie.

Vendors shipped 23.3 million smartphones during Q3 2014, IDC, in its
quarterly mobile phone tracker report said and added that India is the
fastest growing market in the Asia Pacific region

With 23.3
million shipments in the quarter, smartphones demonstrated 27%
quarter-on-quarter growth and a robust 82% year-on-year growth.

"Smartphone with screen size between 4.5-inch and 5.5-inch are seen as
the sweet spot for consumer preference. Consumer need higher screen size
phone to enjoy media content and with the 4G rollout expected in
CY2015, we expect Phablets segment to pick up again" Kiran Kumar,
research manager, Client Devices IDC India said.

Samsung also led the overall market but it's gap with second place Micromax narrowed in the quarter, IDC said.

Thursday, 13 November 2014

Online
retail is poised for a hyper jump into rural India. To go one up on
archrival Flipkart, Snapdeal — one of the country's largest e-tailers —
plans to tap 50 lakh low-income households in slums and villages across
the country. These include places such as Dharavi (Mumbai), which is
Asia's largest slum, Govindpuri, one of the biggest slums in Delhi, and
villages in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Haryana, among many others.

Snapdeal will launch around 5,000 e-commerce kiosks across 65 cities and
70,000 rural areas by the end of next year with the help of FINO
PayTech, an Indian financial inclusion solutions company. These
e-commerce centers will be manned by village-level entrepreneurs, have
personal computers and tablets, and also serve as collection and
delivery points of packages since most people living in these areas
usually have no permanent addresses. Additionally, they will help
consumers with zero internet connectivity to shop online.

"I am
going into this thinking that we will be able to reach 5-10 crore new
consumers in the next three years," Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO of
Snapdeal, told TOI. At present, Snapdeal has around 3 crore registered
users.

Interestingly, initial pilot runs by these kiosks have
revealed that the average ticket size of purchases by rural consumers is
not too far behind that of urban consumers. "It is Rs 1,400 compared to
Rs 2,000 from urban areas," said Bahl.

Snapdeal
will be offering a special assortment of utility-cum-aspirational
products, such as speakers, juicers, solar lanterns, diner sets, cameras
and mobile phones. These products will be curated on an exclusive page
that will require login by a FINO agent, who would place an order,
collect payment, receive and deliver to people who have no permanent
address.

"This channel has great potential. For instance, we
call people from Dharavi the HNIs (high net worth individual) of slums,"
said Rishi Gupta, executive director and COO of FINO PayTech.

Tata
Group has started putting together a team for its proposed big-bang
foray into e-commerce marketplace under Ashutosh Pandey, former COO of
the Group's bookstore chain Landmark.

The Group has also roped
in Sarvesh Dwivedi, who has been heading the lifestyle division of eBay
India, three people familiar with Tatas' plans told ET.

Gurvinderjit Singh Samra, who has worked with Tata Group's different
arms, including its life-science and healthcare unit, Titan and Indian
Hotels, has joined the e-commerce team, two of them said. "Obviously
there is a small team as things are currently being sketched," one of
them said.

Latif Nathani, managing director of eBay India,
confirmed the departure of Dwivedi from the company, but said he is not
sure where Dwivedi is headed. Prior to eBay, Dwivedi worked with
Myntra.com and Reliance Retail among other firms.

ET had in
September reported that the Tatas are preparing for an entry into
India's lucrative e-commerce business with a marketplace model similar
to Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. A spokesperson for Tata Sons said that
the Group has "interest" in e-commerce, but refused to share details
for the proposed venture. "As we had told you on September 22,
e-commerce is of interest to the Tata Group, and we will share more
information at the appropriate moment," the person said in an emailed
reply to ET.

Tatas currently run e-commerce portals for its
Croma consumer electronics chain and Landmark bookstores. Its proposed
new e-commerce marketplace, which will provide an online platform for
small and large vendors and retailers to sell their wares, is expected
to be launched next year.

In the initial phase Tata Group plans
to sell products from its own brands including Star Bazaar supermarket
and Westside department store. The company is also in talks with its
joint venture partner Inditex to get Spanish brand Zara on board as
well.

E-commerce in India is expected to almost double in two
years to $20 billion by 2015 from $11 billion in 2013, according to a
just-released report by Motilal Oswal Securities.

Wednesday, 12 November 2014

Internet
businesses and content creators in India have reason to cheer US
president Barack Obama's latest endorsement of "network neutrality", the
notion that all internet traffic should be treated as equal by service
providers. "We believe that even the smallest player should have
non-discriminatory access to the pipes," said the Internet Mobile
Association of India (IAMAI) in a statement.

Unlike in the US,
network neutrality has not become the subject of a major public debate
in India yet. However, as subscribers shift to data-based services,
telecom operators have been wanting to strike revenue-sharing deals with
companies such as WhatsApp and Skype to make up for the income they
lose from traditional SMS and voice.

Proponents of network
neutrality fear that allowing service providers to strike such deals
could create a discriminatory environment as companies with money can
buy faster internet speeds to reach users and new businesses will lose
out in the process.

Delhi-based media entrepreneur Nikhil
Pahwa, who has been closely tracking the discussion on network
neutrality in India, said, "I'm worried that telecom operators will
create gateways to the internet." Pah wa said that if telcos — also
large internet service providers in the country — create such gateways,
it will stifle new internet businesses.

"Big companies will
ultimately succeed and people like me will have to sign deals with them
just to make my content accessible," said Pahwa of Medianama.

The practice of providing free access to certain services such as
Facebook, as its founder Mark Zuckerberg proposed on his recent visit to
India, is also being questioned for being discriminatory. Telecom
company Airtel recently launched One Touch Internet, which allows access
a limited set of services for first-time internet users.

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Opera
Mini, a popular mobile phone web browser, has achieved 50 million users
in India, making the South Asian nation the largest market by this
measure for the Norwegian company that's now scouting for possible
acquisitions in the mobile advertising space in the country.

Opera Software chief executive Lars Boilesen estimated that the number
of users in India would double to 100 million within a year given pace
of growth of smartphones, a fourth of which are set to come from Nokia's
Xpress web browser, which will further strengthen India's presence at
the top.

"It's a mobile-first market and there are a lot of
people here who haven't been connected to data," Boilesen said. The
company's global operations will be centred on markets including
Indonesia and Russia where users will access the internet for the first
time via mobile phones.

Opera Mini has more than 300 million
users worldwide. Microsoft acquired Nokia's mobile phone business for
$7.5 billion in September and a month later, 100 million Nokia's Xpress
web browser users have been asked to migrate to Opera Mini, which has
become the default browser for Microsoft's feature phones and the Asha
phones. A fourth of these users are in India. Microsoft will still
service Asha phones already in the market.

Monday, 10 November 2014

US
technology giants are tripping over each other to get a slice of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India and Smart Cities projects. In
less than three months, Google and Hewlett-Packard have followed
Facebook and Microsoft to queue up in government offices to show off
their technology wares, highlighting renewed foreign investor interest
as India's economy recovers.

Google, the owner of the world's
largest search engine, has sounded out the telecom department about
providing 'inexpensive' internet access across India through a network
of helium-filled balloons, currently being tested for efficacy under
'Project Loon'. The solar-powered balloons are being run as pilot
projects in New Zealand, California and Brazil and are Google's answer
to Facebook's solar-powered drones.

"Sundar Pichai wanted to
meet telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and discuss the matter
personally but their travel dates clashed on Pichai's recent visit to
India," a person familiar with the company's plans told ET. Prasad was
in Germany during the visit by Indian-origin Pichai, a senior vice
president at Google, who is widely seen as the second-most important man
in the company after chief executive Larry Page.

As a result,
Google executives had met senior officials of the department, including
telecom secretary Rakesh Garg. When contacted, the company said it
didn't comment on market speculation.

Google, along with
Facebook and Microsoft, are vying to deploy their alternative
technologies to offer 'last-mile' broadband connections in remote and
inaccessible parts of India to provide access to high-speed internet.
Under an ambitious Rs 1.13 lakh-crore 'Digital India' initiative, the
government plans to use the national optic fibre network project to
deliver e-services in areas such as health, education to every nook and
corner of the country .

The network, which is positioned to
form the backbone of the Digital India programme, will be deployed only
at the Gram Panchayat level. Reaching the end consumer — homes, schools,
hospitals and other institutions — may require wireless technology,
especially in hard-to-reach areas. Google's balloons, Facebook's drones
and Microsoft's TV white space technology could fill this gap.

Google's Project Loon uses balloons placed in the stratosphere at an
altitude of about 32km to create an aerial wireless network that could
provide internet access at up to 3G-like speeds. The layers of wind in
the stratosphere, which vary in direction and speed, can be used to
steer these balloons to where they're needed. Users on the ground can
connect to the balloon network using a special internet antenna attached
to their homes or buildings.

The competitive edge between the
US behemoths came to the fore when Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg recently
played down the effectiveness of Google's balloons, saying they have a
shorter life than drones and can't survive the rigour of weather
patterns in the troposphere, which lies below the stratosphere, apart
from lacking the precision and control offered by drones.

India, which has seen renewed interest from foreign investors after
going through an image crisis post the Vodafone retrospective tax
episode and the 2G telecom scam, seems to be the latest battleground for
the US giants, which are focused on this hot investment destination.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government
has tried to assuage foreign investors by terming the tax move —
initiated under the previous United Progressive Alliance-II government —
as a bad idea and has taken steps to attract overseas funds by opening
up new sectors such as defence and manufacturing for overseas
investment. Inflation is easing and economic indicators are off lows.
The stock markets are at an all-time high, boosted by foreign portfolio
investments, reflecting new-found confidence in the Indian economy.

Modi's trip to the US was a roaring success and was followed by
high-profile visits of top honchos from the US corporate world,
including Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Zuckerberg, and also that of
Masayoshi Son, Softbank's billionaire founder, all pointing towards an
increased investor confidence.

Friday, 7 November 2014

Microsoft is offering free upgraded versions of its Office
software for iPhones and iPads, as the software giant further embraces
the so-called "freemium" strategy favored by many newer companies
seeking success online.

Give away a basic version of a popular
service, and the world may beat a path to your door and be willing to
pay a little more for extras, or so the thinking goes.

Microsoft, the longtime king of desktop software, has generally
protected its model of getting paid upfront for what it developed. But
as the company strives to stay relevant for workers and consumers in an
increasingly mobile world — and better compete with Google, Apple and
others — it is offering substantial versions of its most popular
products free of charge for smartphones and tablets. Microsoft is hoping
to keep people using its products across all their devices, while
betting that many will ultimately pay for fuller-featured versions of
the software.

"There's going to be a handful of tech companies
that everyone depends on," for online software, said Maribel Lopez, a
mobile tech analyst at Lopez Research. "Microsoft wants to make sure
they're one of them."

As more workers use devices other than
desktop PCs, they want to have the same capabilities on all their
devices, says Michael Atalla, director of Microsoft's Office apps
product management. "We want to make sure they can move seamlessly from
one to another," he added.

The apps, including Word, Excel and
PowerPoint, replace a limited iPhone version and upgrade a more powerful
set of apps that the company released for iPad tablets in March. The
older iPhone version allowed users to create and view files for free,
but had very limited features. Earlier versions for the iPad offered
more capabilities, but creating new files required a paid subscription
to the company's Office 365 subscription service.

The new apps
have more of the capabilities found in Office desktop software and don't
require a paid subscription for creating files and other functions.
Microsoft is still reserving some premium features, including security
tools for business users, for paid subscribers. Microsoft will continue
to charge for Office 365 on PCs and for business users.

The
company seems to be thinking, "We'll perhaps sacrifice a little bit of
revenue on the consumer side to make sure Office remains the standard
for everybody," said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research.
Businesses are increasingly willing to buy technology that their workers
use at home, and that could shore up Microsoft's lucrative commercial
business, Dawson said.

Although most of Microsoft Corp's
revenue still comes from traditional software, CEO Satya Nadella wants
to shift the company's focus to mobile and web-based products. The
Redmond, Washington company recently said it delayed producing a new
version of Office for Apple's Mac computers so it could focus on mobile
apps.

One big challenge for Microsoft stems from the complexity
of building different versions of each app for competing mobile
operating systems. Apple's iPhones and iPads are far outnumbered by
smartphones and tablets that use Google's Android mobile operating
system. But different versions of Android run on a variety of devices
from different manufacturers. Microsoft also has its own mobile
operating system, although it's not as widely used.

Microsoft
is inviting Android users to sign up for a test version of its new
Office apps for Android tablets this week, but Atalla said the finished
apps won't be released until early next year. He said new apps for
Android phones are in the works, but declined to give a time frame.

In another move to keep up with shifting work habits, Microsoft this
week announced a software partnership with Dropbox, an online storage
company that's increasingly popular with people that want to store
documents, photos and other files and share them with others. The two
companies are integrating their software so documents stored in DropBox
can be easily edited with Microsoft's Office tools. Microsoft also has
its own online storage service, while Google and Apple offer competing
services with their apps.

Do you
want to talk to your speaker? Amazon.com has launched "Amazon Echo", a
speaker you leave on all day and give it voice directions, like Siri on
an Apple Inc iPhone.

As well as taking commands such as "play
music by Bruno Mars" or "add gelato to my shopping list", Amazon said
the device accesses the internet to answer questions such as "when is
Thanksgiving?" and "what is the weather forecast?"

Amazon said the speaker, which runs on Amazon Web Services, continually learns a user's speech patterns and preferences.

Users start the speaker up saying the wake up word, "Alexa".

They can then feed Amazon Echo commands or questions or, if they want,
wirelessly stream music web services such as Spotify, iTunes and Pandora
via their mobiles.

Amazon Echo is priced at $199, or $99 for
members for the online retail giant's Amazon Prime loyalty scheme. It is
available on an invitation-only basis in coming weeks.

Amazon has had an unusually busy year, developing a mobile phone, video productions and grocery deliveries.

Last month, the company forecast sales for the crucial holiday quarter
that disappointed Wall Street and investors who are eager to see Amazon
curtail its ambitions and start delivering

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

The
journey of tech behemoths like Google, Apple and Facebook — from
startups to global giants — has caught the fancy of the Indian
government, which is planning a Rs 10,000-crore electronics development
fund to support ambitious startups in attaining scale.

The
government feels that India needs to incubate tech giants from its soil —
like those emanating from the West —as the country has a fast-growing
mass of internet users and possesses a rich list of highly-skilled
techies. The basic groundwork for kick-starting the initiative has been
completed.

"It is in the process of finalization and we will
get an approval very soon," a source in the ministry of information
technology told TOI. This is a different fund from the Rs 10,000-crore
venture fund announced in the Budget for startups in micro, small and
medium enterprise (MSMEs).

The government will not make the
investments directly, but will rather route the money through venture
capital funds that are focused on electronics hardware and IT startups.
"We will take small subscription in them. Thus, we will invest in the
capital of the fellows who do the investments," the source said.

Elaborating on the idea behind the creation of the fund, the source
added, "Innovations are not happening in our country, products are not
being made in our country. We are, at best, a labour market. Our
highly-qualified boys and girls are doing research in Bangalore and
other labs, but they are essentially creating intellectual property
products for foreign companies. Why can't we have our own products where
we have our own intellectual property rights?"

The government
feels that India has missed the bus in terms of creating technology
giants, both in software and electronics hardware. "For example, in
software, a Google or a Facebook or a Microsoft Office has not been
developed in India. Despite being such a big IT power, India has not
been able to make any products. We are able to do just services," the
source added. The government will create the electronic development fund
to make the investments. "We are not directly funding the startups, but
rather we will collaborate with some venture capital funds," the source
said.

The segments earmarked for funds include electronics,
components and software. "The idea is to create a startup culture, a
product culture, and innovation," the source said. Both domestic and
foreign venture capital funds will be targeted by the government to
route its investments.

Sunday, 2 November 2014

As the
world moves rapidly towards the era of smartphones, a brand synonymous
with mobile phones for two decades and one that actually introduced
these more advanced devices to the masses will not be part of this
future. Nokia, arguably one of the most popular mobile phone brands
across the globe, will cease to exist among smartphones in the years to
come as Microsoft, the new owner of Nokia's devices business, has
decided to pull the curtains on one of the most iconic names of our
time, even if only partially.

Microsoft will use the Nokia
brand for 10 years for feature phones and has decided to re-brand the
Nokia Lumia range of smartphones to Microsoft Lumia and discontinue the
Asha and X ranges of smartphones. Redmond-headquartered Microsoft bought
Nokia's devices and services business for $7.5 billion in April, along
with the right to use the Nokia brand

"It's the end of an era,"
said brand consultant Harish Bijoor, who recalls that his second mobile
phone was the Nokia Communicator, a brick-like yet swanky device that
split open to become a mini laptop with a qwerty keypad and business
apps. Owning this handphone at Rs 60,000 or Rs 72,000 more than a decade
ago was akin to owning jewelry. It also meant you had arrived.

"Nokia is a loss. It's a brand that I have real affection for. It still
has the largest brand recall," Bijoor added. Nokia made all the right
moves in its heyday to become one of the most trusted brands among
discerning Indian consumers who wanted value for money and high quality
in any product they bought. It partnered with retailers, carriers and
content makers and introduced a variety of models month after month to
create a flourishing ecosystem for mobile phones in India, one of its
top priority markets globally.

"When all phones were limited to
few colours, Nokia launched the full colour screen phone, which was my
first mobile phone," said 32-year old graphic designer Krishnaraj Singh,
who has since used more than a dozen Nokia phones. Nokia's durability
was another killer feature that no mobile phone can match today. "The
phones wouldn't break even if I were to throw them," said 30-year old
Kavita Kapoor, a public relations professional at a clothing brand in
Gurgaon.

"It's a brand that has captured the imagination of
every single person," said PepsiCo India Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer D Shivakumar, who spearheaded Nokia's growth for almost half of
its 18 years in India, during which it set up India's first mobile phone
manufacturing factory in Sriperumbudur near Chennai in 2009.

At its peak, the factory produced 25% of all Nokia phones sold, which
was 11% of the world's cellphones. From November 1, the factory will
stop functioning. The plant was excluded from the Microsoft deal after
its assets were frozen in tax-related proceedings.

"Nokia was
more than a brand. It was consistent as a brand and as a culture,
humble, honest, caring and empathetic," Shivakumar added. Not everybody
feels that the former pride of Finland has lost its legacy. The brand
will live on, even if it is restricted to feature phones used by 71% of
India's 900 million mobile phone owners, which is only diminishing as
they upgrade to smartphones.

"The brand equity will remain
intact," said a former senior executive at Nokia, who did not want to be
identified. "It will only move to Microsoft, which is not an unknown
brand in India. I have seen customers walking into Microsoft retail
stores that were earlier Nokia Priority Dealers with the same ease and
confidence they had in Nokia," he added.

Many consumers believe
that in terms of recall, the brand will prevail even for smartphones
because it will take a while for the change of brand to register.
Customers, especially those who have used or are using Lumia devices,
are likely to habitually keep referring to them as Nokia Lumia instead
of Microsoft Lumia.

"Buying a Microsoft Lumia is just not the
same as buying a Nokia Lumia. For a generation that has grown up with
the idea that a smartphone equals N Series or E Series, not being able
to buy a Nokia smartphone will leave a void. Ten years later, no one
will reminiscence about their iPhone 5, 6 or 10, it will be the Nokia
N95 that they will recall," said Vaibhav Sharma, a lawyer and tech
blogger who has followed Nokia for several years.

"If Nokia's
demise proves one thing, it is that nothing stays forever in the world
of technology. So don't be surprised if you see Nokia make a comeback in
2016. Remember, they didn't sell their patents or the HERE mapping
division to Microsoft," he added

Under the terms of the deal,
Nokia, which now operates telecom equipment, HERE maps and technologies
businesses after the acquisition, will continue to own and maintain the
Nokia brand. After the transaction closes, Nokia cannot license the
Nokia brand for use in connection with mobile device sales for 30 months
and cannot use the brand on Nokia's own mobile devices until December
31, 2015.